Beautiful, ass-kicking women have jiggled and trounced their way through the criminal underworld since comics’ inception. Publishers know that their young, mostly male readership likes a little sex with their violence and they’ve always obliged. And while one could construe powerful female characters as almost feministic, when combined with titillating art, an obvious conflict emerges. Those images contradict any pretense of equality when the subjects become sex objects. No comic creator should justify scantily-clad super-heroines with, “Well, she’s a really strong woman.“ I doubt most comic creators see their female characters as feminist icons. They may like the characters for other reasons, and like most men, they like breasts. Again, they draw what they like. Yet, I know that superhero comics that double as soft-core porn repel some female readers. I’m not offended by those images, but I’m a guy. However, while I don’t want comics to serve as feminist manifestos, the comic industry must realize that some comics’ depiction of women repels potential readers by focusing more on boobies than on story. Ultimately, most female heroines don’t depict “empowered, independent womyn” so much as male fantasies combining sex and violence. Personally, it only bothers me when it lowers superhero comics to juvenile wish-fulfillment instead of using them to address questions of morality, power and responsibility, and the like. I don’t mean that DC should inspect every panel of WONDER WOMAN to remove any distracting cleavage, but there are a number of titles that traffic more in tits and ass than story.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 9:39 AM  |